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(07-16-2015, 10:28 PM)MacBerry Wrote: The concept of the preservation of architecture for the future was never something talked about in public because no one really cared about heritage until about the 1990s (my best guess). Cities or towns didn't have funds or a willingness to preserve.

Stratford had a battle in the early 70s in response to plans to demolish their own city hall and replace it with an office tower - a plan quite similar to the plans in Kitchener and Waterloo. In Stratford, preservation won.

In Stratford's case, the plan was to build a hotel. The plan fell through when the powers that be concluded that Stratford did not have a need for a large, year-round hotel since the primary clientele, the Festival crowd, was seasonal.

In Waterloo's case, the City was written off as in poor condition and too small for the growing City. Around the same time, the Waterloo Market building and the Fire Hall were also demolished to make way for the new WPL main branch as well as the extension of Dupont Street.

(07-20-2015, 11:27 AM)nms Wrote: In Stratford's case, the plan was to build a hotel. The plan fell through when the powers that be concluded that Stratford did not have a need for a large, year-round hotel since the primary clientele, the Festival crowd, was seasonal.

Quoting from "Stratford: Its Heritage and Its Festival":

Quote:In 1964, a suggestion by Mayor C. H. Meier that city hall should be demolished for a new development that would accommodate a hotel for tourists as well as city hall offices began an argument that took several years to resolve. In 1969, when the council agreed to demolish the late Victorian landmark, six women in Stratford spearheaded the "Save the City Hall League" and approached the council with a petition to retain the building. This issue was not resolved until 1972, when the developer finally withdrew from the discussion and the city hall was spared.

I have a hard time believing that public opposition played no role here. And regardless, I was responding to a claim that the public didn't care about heritage before the 90's. Stratford itself certainly makes plenty of reference to the battle to save city hall.

"The Kitchener Memorial Auditorium was built in 1950 on East Ave. in Kitchener. This aerial shows the almost-completed structure beside Knollwood Park, a former military training camp. In the foreground new housing is going up."

Quote:On the opposite side of King Street, 32 King Street North is currently the home of Carry on Comics and Kindred Spirit. Formerly called the Commercial Hotel; it was built about 1882 to replace an existing hotel that had burned down. The Commercial used to have a beautiful roofline and a corner tower that was removed in the early 1900s. Henry Raisig purchased the building from Jacob Conrad in 1902, eventually calling it the Raisig Hotel. He was also a town Councilor and was said to be a popular landlord. The building is now the Kingsway apartments with stores on the main level and is stucco over brick.

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